


MCMXC (1990)

by Pun



Category: History Boys - Bennett
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-27
Updated: 2009-12-27
Packaged: 2017-10-05 08:53:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/39913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pun/pseuds/Pun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some of his former pupils come back into contact with Irwin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	MCMXC (1990)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Celandine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Celandine/gifts).



> This story follows film canon, although some of the quotations at the beginning of each section appear only in the play. Please forgive the inconsistency.

>   
>  _. . . there must have been something furtive about Irwin's arrival because I wrote it down. I called it clandestine, a word I'd just learnt and wasn't sure how to pronounce._  
> 

 

"Thomas Irwin," Scripps' editor said with the air of a ringmaster presenting his star acrobat.

Scripps could not suppress a small frown, but he made no more reply than a single raised eyebrow, as he'd learned that was the best way to get Mr. Billington to continue and explain himself when he made these types of theatrical pronouncements.

"You're old school chums, aren't you? Marlborough, was it?"

"Cutler's Grammar School." Scripps corrected the second error but not the first.

"Ah, yes, well, no matter." Mr. Billington stroked the second knuckle of his middle finger across the left half of his mustache and then the right. "His programme is doing a segment on Titchfield Abbey." Titchfield made up part of Fareham parish where the paper on which Scripps worked enjoyed a circulation of nearly twelve hundred households. "Surely he won't mind if you stop by the shoot. Be a chance to catch up on old times, eh?"

*

The grass surrounding the Abbey's famed fishponds was damp with dew, but the sunrise had already burned off the fog from the night before. The shoot was due to start at 6 a.m. Scripps wrapped both hands around his polystyrene coffee cup and blew the steam away from his face before taking a sip.

He could have objected to the assignment, asked Billington to send one of the media guys, or maybe the grandmotherly woman who wrote the "local interest" column. But really, he was curious to see Irwin again, if a bit worried that theirs was a history better left buried. Logically, he knew there was no connection between the immoral way Irwin taught and Hector's death. And yet the two were inextricably connected in Scripps' mind.

This irrational sense of danger had stayed Scripps' hand when he'd considered phoning Dakin to tell him about the interview. On the rare occasions when they spoke of Irwin, it was always in carefully indifferent tones, as if he were any former teacher.

As Scripps drew closer he could see cameramen, sound men holding microphones on the ends of long poles and people with clipboards all milling about like a colony of audio/visually inclined ants. Scripps spotted Irwin quickly—he stood off to the side unbuttoning his shirt so that one of the crew could run a microphone wire up underneath.

Scripps caught a flash of white belly before Irwin turned away.

He waited until the sound check finished to make his approach. "Excuse me," he called out.

Irwin turned towards him. His eyes widened in startled recognition. "Scripps?" he asked, as if he were questioning his own sight.

"Hello, Mr. Irwin, sir." Scripps gave a small salute. "Your producer said it would be all right to ask you a few questions before the shoot. I write for the _Fareham Gazette_. I've gone into journalism." Scripps felt his usual embarrassment over naming his profession. "If it's not too much bother?"

Irwin looked surprised, almost bereft for a moment, and then roused himself. "Ah, yes, of course. Naturally."

Scripps wondered at Irwin's seeming disappointment. Could the man actually believe that Scripps would have sought him out on his own in this fashion?

"Why did you choose Titchfield Abbey to feature on your programme?" Scripps asked, getting out his notebook and pen.

Irwin bit the side of his thumb and looked all around the site as if needing to recall where he was before beginning, "Titchfield is the best preserved of the various monasteries founded by Peter des Roches, significant, of course for his role in opposing the aspirations of Hubert de Burgh, first Earl of Kent."

Irwin's tone was rather wooden, but his mechanical answers warmed as he expanded on the significance of Titchfield Abbey to the local economy at its founding, and the later likely Shakespearian connection.

Scripps made quick and methodical work of the interview, hitting all the points. Whatever advantage his editor had been expecting to get out of the connection, his article would be as by-rote and predictable as one of Totty's lectures.

"How have you been, Scripps?" Irwin asked him when he'd finished with his questions.

"I'm well, sir, thank you. And yourself?"

"Oh, you know," Irwin made a gesture that encompassed the bustle of activity around him. "I keep busy. Do you ever—" he broke off.

_Go on._ Ask _me,_ Scipps thought, and some nervous thrill rumbled in his stomach. He didn't know what he would answer.

Irwin still wore the same wire-framed glasses, which he adjusted with the slightly skittish motion of his hand that Scripps remembered as the crack in his bravado; the sign of his uncertainty outside the realm of ideas. "Do you get into London much?"

"I do. I often go into town to see friends."

Irwin held his eyes for a few seconds before looking away. "Ah, yes, of course." He nodded. "It was good to see you, Scripps." Scripps took the proffered hand and squeezed it firmly. "Next time you're in West London, you should call in at the BBC, get shown around the studio. Speak to Donna over there." Irwin pointed to a blonde woman with a headset, and a clipboard. "She can give you the address and answer any of your questions about the more technical aspects of the show."

Irwin motioned with his head, and a makeup girl who had been waiting a few feet away with powder puff and brushes at the ready swooped in to get to work.

Scripps walked off feeling that he had just been put off more smoothly than the Irwin he'd known at school could have done.

*  


>   
>  _That this envy might amount to love does not yet occur to Posner, as to date it has only caused him misery and dissatisfaction._  
> 

 

Posner preferred not to think of it as stalking. Yes, he caught the programme every week. And yes, every Friday afternoon he positioned himself carefully behind dark glasses and a newspaper at a coffee shop across the street from the studio where most of the show was filmed. But he didn't think that that was stalking exactly. He'd never gone through the man's rubbish bins. He didn't plan to threaten him, nor did he harbor fantasies of the two of them running away to the Canary Islands to live happily ever after.

He just wanted some answers, really. Wanted to know why he couldn't forget. Wanted to know why those few months of his life felt so much more real to him than the other twenty-four years put together so that maybe he could put them to rest. He wanted free of History. But he knew Irwin wasn't really the one to whom he wanted to address all of those questions. Which was why at 4:57 every Friday at a shabby café on Macfarlane Road he didn't leave his stool or lower his paper more than a fraction of a centimeter as Irwin walked by.

Until one night some curious impulse made Posner drop his paper and leave the café directly after Irwin passed, following a few paces behind. He tracked Irwin, peeking round corners and ducking into doorways, enjoying the James Bond thrill of it all until finally he saw Irwin go inside a non-descript Georgian in Hammersmith.

He posted the note the very next day and felt freer and lighter than he had since he was a boy the moment it left his hand, as if he'd dropped a lead rucksack and not a mere slip of paper into the pillar box.

The trap door clanged shut and Posner gave in to the urge to skip as he moved away, humming Gracie Fields.

*  
__

> _Nice to be a bit more complicated._

 

The stationary was light blue and arrived in a matching light blue envelope. There was no greeting only: "Thought you might want this" written across the top of the page, followed by an address and a phone number:  
29 Benbow Rd.  
020 7289 3766

No signature or return address were provided, but Dakin immediately recognized the more slanted version of his own handwriting which was itself an imitation of someone else's.

Why had Pos sent him an address? What address would he want? Or, more to the point, what address would Posner think he wanted? Certainly not his own. Posner was never under any illusions about his chances there.

Scripps on one of his regular trips into London to get pissed and bemoan how he had no time "to really write," unwittingly unlocked the puzzle for him saying, "Did you see the telly last night? Again with the 'Mrs. Thatcher' and Henry VIII."

And Dakin remembered walking with the feeling of scratchy wool faintly warmed by the body underneath under his palm, and the smell of freshly trodden grass in his nostrils, and he knew whose address Posner would think that he wanted.

The only question was, did he want to make History happen?

*  


>   
>  _It's not so much lest we forget, as lest we remember._  
> 

 

Dakin was on the front porch of his house when Irwin got home. He sat on the second step, leaning back against the third and smoking a cigarette as casually as if he came round every second Thursday.

The sight made Irwin's head feel disturbingly light, like it was trying to float right off his neck, and it seemed to have lost communication with his feet, which planted themselves where they were on the pavement and refused to move on.

Dakin hailed him with a hand straight in the air and a half-smile that Irwin recalled finding disarming when it was aimed at him from across a desk.

"Evening," Dakin called, flicking his cigarette butt to the ground as he stood and walked to where Irwin was standing.

Irwin's lips and tongue were proving as rebellious as his feet, and he barely induced them to stutter hello.

"It's good to see you," Dakin said more as if he were prompting Irwin than expressing his own sentiments. "It's been a long time." There was an amused light in his eyes.

"It has," Irwin nodded. He was wary, waiting for the trap.

They stood looking at each other, their breath making small steam clouds between them. Irwin's eyes roved over Dakin's black leather jacket, his well-tailored trousers. He was wearing his hair a bit shorter, but his face was identical to the one that looked out at Irwin from the group photo in the bottom of his sock drawer. Irwin was uncomfortably aware that the intervening years had not been equally gentle with him, drawing lines around the corners of his mouth, leaving baggy patches under his eyes. Ironic that the age difference between them should be more visible now than it was then.

Dakin folded his arms across his chest, bringing his hands beneath his armpits and shivered. "Aren't you going to invite me in, then?"

"If you'd like."

Dakin followed him into his flat, a respectable few steps behind, and Irwin repined for the way Dakin used to crowd him. "Sir," he would say, coming up from behind in the hallway and tapping Irwin on the shoulder. Irwin would have to work not to startle, work even harder make sure that their bodies didn't brush as he turned.

The sight of Dakin was more shocking inside the flat amongst Irwin's familiar things: his plain, serviceable furniture and his over-stuffed bookshelves.

"What are you doing here?" Irwin asked him, not angrily, more the way he would address a volume on Roman oratory that appeared on the shelf with his books on the Battle of Dunkirk.

"Can't I look up one of my old Masters? Chance for you to hear about the man I've become and how much you molded me, and all that rot. Thought teachers ate that stuff up. Hector would have loved it."

"I was only a teacher for the one term."

"Yes. I like your programme. I particularly enjoyed your argument that James I had in fact promoted his male favorites at court far less than previous monarchs had done their mistresses." Dakin smirked. "Very convincing."

Irwin inclined his head in acknowledgement of the compliment, unable to keep his lips from twitching up briefly into an answering smile.

"I got a first, you know. Just kept on arguing cross-wise and reciting relevant 'gobbets,' and I was roundly praised by all my dons for my independent thinking and cleverness. I'm reading law now at Kings."

"Congratulations," Irwin said. What was he supposed to say?

"Well it's thanks to you."

Irwin shook his head, not so much to deny Dakin's thanks as his presence. For two years Irwin hadn't even set foot anywhere near Oxfordshire because he didn't want to be tempted to seek out Dakin. The pain had not been as brief as Hector had promised. The longing had been so strong some nights he'd thought he might bleed.

"I don't know what you're doing here," Irwin said.

"I wanted to see you. Do I need another reason?" Dakin spread his hands in a gesture of open innocence. "We could go for a drink."

"No." Irwin swallowed. "Go home, Stuart."

"Stuart? Am I to call you Tom then?"

"Who says you're to call me anything? We may never meet again."

Dakin gave a violent, negating jerk of his head. "Oh, no. We have unfinished business, you and I." Irwin recognized Dakin's childish irritation at encountering someone who would not give him his way, mixed with a clear and unsettling determination that he would get it in the end. "I'll be calling you about that drink," he said, carefully emphasizing the word 'drink' to sound filthier than an outright proposition.

Irwin moved to the doorway and held it open.

"A tout à l'heure, _sir_," he said as he passed, looking up at Irwin with lowered lashes and pursed lips.

Irwin reflected that Dakin's flirting was more charming when the coyness had come from genuine inexpertise and was not all study.

*

Dakin did call, and Irwin did agree to meet, though he insisted on the middle of the day in a teashop.

"Tea is a drink," Dakin told him cheekily, and then ordered a coffee and drank it black.

"What kind of law will you do?" Irwin asked as he stirred sugar into his Darjeeling.

"Whatever pays best," Dakin shrugged. "We're not really here to talk about how I'm getting on, and what I plan to do with my life, are we?"

"What else would you have us talk about?"

"Why can't we talk about what happened between us?"

"Nothing happened," Irwin denied as vehemently as if he were on trial for it.

"Funny, that's what Hector said. I'd say his definition of 'nothing' was nearly as far off as yours." Dakin placed both hands palms-down on the table. "I fell in love with you. Is that 'nothing'?"

"Oh no." Irwin shook his head. "We both know you don't love anyone but yourself."

"All right, then. What I thought was love, a close approximation to it," High spots of color stained his cheeks, and Dakin leaned in closer saying, "the nearest I've ever come to it."

Irwin breathed out through his nose, turning away from Dakin's seductive, pouting, lying mouth. "You're a romantic. You were, all of you, always too romantic. Hector's influence," he slipped into the role of stern father to Hector's over-protective mother and used it as a shield, as he had back then. "All that poetry, I suppose."

"Perhaps." Dakin appeared to have regained his composure. He was watching Irwin, his head cocked to one side. "'Lay your sleeping head, my love,/ Human on my faithless arm.'"

Irwin raised his hand up, signaling Dakin to stop. "Don't."

"'But he frowned like thunder and he went away,'" Dakin continued

"Enough Auden!"

Like a bloodhound scenting game Dakin's posture lifted, his head came forward. "So you recognize that it's Auden."

"It was a lucky guess," said Irwin, not wanting to give anything away, though he feared it was far too late for that. "Please, just—in your own words tell me why you came here today."

Dakin watched him for a moment silently. He folded his arms across his chest and said, "I wanted to see what would happen."

"And that's it? That's the truth?'

"What's truth got to do with it? What's truth got to do with anything?"

"I asked you to use your own words," Irwin told him, "but I suppose it's a fair answer."

*

Dakin did not keep his distance as they entered Irwin's flat this time. Irwin could feel warm breath on the back of his neck as he fumbled with his keys.

Through the door and Dakin's hand landed on his shoulder, turning him, and stepped in close for a kiss.

Dakin's lips were soft, and his tongue was hot, and his hands on Irwin's arms felt strong enough to rip him in two.

Irwin broke free, raising his hand up to keep Dakin from pursuing him. His head felt light again, and his heart was racing.

"This is mad. You should go." He took a step back, keeping his hand up like he would to an aggressive dog.

Dakin practically stomped his foot. Throwing his hands up and saying plaintively, "I can't understand you. There's no one left to mind. We're finally here. What's keeping you?"

A flurry of unsayable answers crowded Irwin's mind: _You'll see how unpracticed I am; you didn't look me up sooner; you still terrify me._

He turned away from Dakin to study the spines of his own books.

Irwin heard the rustle of cloth that meant Dakin was coming nearer. "I'm not a boy anymore, you know," he said gently. There was a note in his voice, serious and adult, and for the first time Irwin believed that it might be true, or might be true some day.

Irwin turned to look at Dakin. His lips were moist and parted, and so red, always so red.

Dakin reached out with two hands and very slowly brought them to either side of Irwin's face and lifted his glasses away. He carefully placed them down on an end table before coming closer again. Irwin was conscious of blurry, dark eyes and coffee-scented breath, and then they were pressed together in another kiss.

The careful façade of denial that Irwin had clung to fell away. No more room for denial with Dakin's fingers moving insistently over his face, coaxing his jaw open to thrust his tongue deeply into Irwin's mouth.

Irwin made fists in Dakin's jumper and hauled him in close. The hard planes and angles of Dakin's body felt wonderful against his and so warm. Heat seemed to be seeping into him from Dakin, and it was as if the warmth melted a tight band he hadn't known was constricting his heart.

He had to break out of the kiss, laughing. Dakin looked at him confused. "Simple," Irwin said, "that was so simple."

"That's what I've been trying to tell you, but you're a very dull pupil," Dakin said, smiling as he guided Irwin's mouth back to his.

The kiss grew fiercer, and Irwin pushed forward into it, devouring the needy noises that Dakin was making.

Dakin led him to the bedroom, taking charge as if it were his home they were in, but once there, he made no further advances. It was Irwin who undressed them, and Irwin who whispered, "You'll let me fuck you?" His lips were pressed to Dakin's ear, and he felt Dakin's assenting nod.

Dakin was tight as a new leather glove. Tight as Irwin's fist had been when he would lose his struggles against his forbidden fantasies.

He had to move slowly at first, but he felt the moment when Dakin's tolerance turned to pleasure. The iron grip on his forearm relaxed, and Dakin's body flushed with heat, sweat breaking out across his skin.

The room was blurry around him but he could see Dakin's face going soft with pleasure, and see that his dark eyes stayed open, never leaving Irwin's face.

Irwin wrapped a hand around Dakin's hard cock, sliding his fingers up and down its length and using his thumb to tease circles around the head, coaxing little wordless cries of pleasure from him.

Irwin was panting swift and open-mouth, his desire building each time Dakin cried out and contracted around him. Irwin reveled in the feeling, joining and echoing with moans of his own, until he was coming hard, pumping his orgasm into Dakin's willing body.

"All right. You're all right," Irwin said, soothing Dakin's objections as he pulled out. He put his fingers where his cock had been, and bent to take the full length of Dakin's cock into his mouth and throat.

Dakin made a whining sound like he was breaking open, and then his hips bucked furiously. His hand scrabbled for Irwin's free one and held on.

No more than a few hard sucks, and Dakin was coming. Spurts of salty, viscous fluid filled Irwin's mouth, ran down the back of his throat, chocking him. He pulled off, coughing and struggling for air.

"You would try to swallow whether you knew what you were doing or not." Dakin looked up at him with a lazy, pleased expression.

Irwin coughed some more and ran the back of his hand across his mouth. "I know what I'm doing." The ragged tone of his voice rather belied his insistence.

"You did seem to until that last bit." Dakin sat up and slid a thumb along the underside of Irwin's lip. It came away shiny and wet, and he licked it clean.

Irwin closed his eyes and groaned as his cock stirred painfully.

Dakin leaned across him to reach Irwin's cigarettes on the nightstand. He lit two and handed one to Irwin.

They smoked in silence. Dakin kept watching him, and Irwin's cheeks grew warm. He looked down at his lap.

"Do you want me to leave?" Dakin asked.

"I don't think so." He truly wasn't sure. "I have to go out in a bit. There's an awful Christmas party being held by one of our main advertisers. My producer insists I attend."

There was a reddish mark near Dakin's collar bone. Irwin didn't remember biting him there, but it couldn't have come about any other way. He took a long drag on his cigarette and blew out the smoke at the ceiling. "You could come with me, if you'd like."

Dakin raised his eyebrows. "Would you introduce me as your former pupil?"

"Maybe." Irwin imagined Dakin at the party, a glass of scotch in one hand and a cigarette in the other. He imagined himself leaning close to whisper some remark in Dakin's ear that would make him smirk, and he laughed a little, imagining the expression on his executive producer's face.

Dakin laughed back and looked sideways at Irwin, a small smile curving his lips. "They said you were a hopeless case, but I think we just might be making progress."

"You should take a shower, if you're coming," Irwin told him, and went to retrieve his glasses.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the yuletide 2007 challenge. I cannot thank linaerys, rivier, and mojokid enough for their excellent betas. They greatly improved the story. Deep gratitude as well to kaizoku for truly heroic last minute hand holding.


End file.
